Going In For Guns: A Memoir of the Reaper Wars
by ValentineDiverseOptics
Summary: Geth? Cerberus? Reapers? No, the biggest threat to a person dropped into the path of an oncoming apocalypse is overconfidence, and the illusion that they know exactly what's going to come next. Some days you walk around a corner, and end up in a fight. They're usually not this big, though. SI Ch 3: Sex stories, energy drinks, and love at first sight. Valentine explores the Mog.
1. Intercept Course 1

A/N: Wait, what's this? Another story? And a SI to boot? Yes folks, Flux Effect will not be continuing. Between a distaste for some of the developments, and a feeling that my writing in first person present was lacking, I have pulled back and decided to attack the concept from a different angle. Many thanks to Herr Wozzeck for helping me iron out some issues with the rough draft. I hope you folks enjoy.

A/N The Second: For those of you who have been reading for a while, you might notice some changes. These are due to some excellent points made by Atreyu429, and some other major brainstorming done behind the scenes. Hopefully this should make for a much stronger story in the long run. (Edit 9/26/12)

* * *

Going In For Guns: A Memoir of the Reaper Wars

Book 1: Intercept Course

Maj. Christopher "Nice Boots" Z. Valentine

Systems Alliance Marines Tactical Aerospace Command (ret.)

Systems Alliance Naval Intelligence (aux./ret.)

Citadel Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance (aux.)

* * *

"_I, Christopher Zachary Valentine, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Charter and Citizens of the Systems Alliance against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the Parliament of the Systems Alliance and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and Systems Alliance Military Law."_

Even now, I'm not sure I could have done anything else but raise my hand and swear that oath. Life certainly didn't turn out how I expected it.

If you're reading this, you probably are going to think that I'm crazy. I don't care. I have my friends and loved ones who accept me. That's more than enough. But even if it wasn't, the fact that life in the Milky Way is free from the ancient cycle of preservational annihilation and I was one of the billions who fought for it certainly is.

This is my take on our story, from before the Arterius Incident to the aftermath of the Battle of Earth. It's one hell of a ride, and a reminder, that no matter what we dream, the truth is stranger than fiction.

So, _ad astra, per aspera_. To my fallen brothers and sisters, and those that yet live. This one's for you.

* * *

I was not born in the Traverse, or on a ship, like it says in the records in various government files. I was born on Earth, more than two centuries ago. I was born in another dimension, one in which the Reaper Wars formed, vaguely, the plotline of one of my favorite fictional series. To say it was successful would be doing it an injustice. With multiple games, novels, comics, and video projects to its name, along with plenty of licensed merchandise, it had spawned a fan community that compares to _Fleet and Flotilla_ at its heyday, a community I was a member of. As a typical military geek, my head was filled with too much information about the universe and I often thought about tactics and tech. Like anyone dissatisfied with their life, I occasionally yearned for a slice of high adventure that something different offered.

Plenty of people wrote stories where they were transported into the games and ended up part of the main plot, changing things, by and large for the better. Enjoyable as that kind of escapism is, I always had the thought that, realistically, an untrained civilian tossed in with the galaxy's best and brightest would likely get themselves killed, and would be lucky not to take others with them, leaving the galaxy wide open to the Reapers.

Still, the space operatic romance of the idea was hard to deny.

It figures that when I ended up here, I had no thoughts of the series. I was focused on the lesson on _Meister Liechtenauer's Knust des Fechten_ I was going to teach to a friend of mine. He had already headed to my backyard to set up our equipment, including a cutting stand. It was the first time cutting for him, and I had brought out one of my prize blades, an Albion Oakeshott Type XVIa, twin to the sword I first cut with.

It was a thing of beauty, a stunning creation of calfskin, cord, birch, and steel. The shaving-sharp edges tapered to a tip designed to seek out the gaps between armor plate and plunge through to the enemy beyond. The blade's balance made it feel alive in my hands, as if it yearned to jump five centuries back and cut and thrust with its spiritual forebears.

The blade was as pristine as the day I bought it, lying there against the foam of a rifle case. _Soon_, I promised it. _You'll get to cut soon._ Filling my hands with the hilt, I ran the blade through some dry handling before striking the side of the pommel to test the blade's harmonics. Perfect as always.

Humming, I headed outside, looking forward to a good cutting session. As I turned the corner of my house, I closed my eyes and drew in a breath to savor the smell of the honeysuckle blossoms, only to have my nostrils fill with the stench of burning plastics and flesh. Screams filled the air, and as my eyes shot open, I could see the sky was purple.

I whipped the longsword down off my shoulder, crouching down as I tried to figure out what the hell had happened. My eyes darted about, trying to place myself. The purple sky was only the beginning of what was wrong. My house was made of classic red brick. The boxy structure I was next to was some kind of metal. A quick rap with my fist produced an odd tone as my vision continued to dart about. _Metal buildings, purple sky? _I looked down. _Orange grass? What the HELL just happened? And, better question, where am__ I?_ Before I could puzzle out more, my ears pulled my thoughts back towards survival.

Above the screams and the roar of flames, triple whipcracks split the air, occasionally cutting off a scream with a meaty thump.

_That's gotta be gunfire._ I crept along the alloy wall of the prefab I found myself next to. _Awfully sharp, though. Even .22 long rifle has more bang._

Coming to a door, I shouldered through it, liking my chances of survival better inside a shelter. Whirling at a sudden scream, I stopped myself from putting the tip of my sword through a girl's throat on pure reflex.

"Y-y-y-you're…" Her brown hair was disheveled, and tears filled her eyes. Soot and blood stained her face.

I offlined the tip and released the pommel, bringing a finger up to my lips. "Shhh."

"You're human?" The girl dropped her voice, but with that weird gunfire, it was too loud for my tastes.

"Yeah," I whispered. Looking around the prefab, I saw plenty of what I took to be futuristic farming equipment. "Where am I, and what's happening?"

The girl gave me a look like I was stupid. I couldn't really blame her.

"Humor the nut with a sword, huh?"

"You're on Tiptree…" That was as far as she got before another triple whipcrack blew a hole in the prefab's wall with an almighty banging sound.

Shrapnel from the wall tore across my short ribs. "Sonofabitch! Down!" I shoved the girl down, before clapping a hand to my side. That sent another lance of pain through my body.

"You're bleeding!"

Out of the mouths of babes, huh? Snatching my hand away, I noted the crimson palm and grimaced, only for my eyes to shoot open as a helmetless batarian kicked open another door, assault rifle in his hands. He yelled something guttural, and I assume, offensive. He cocked his head to the right and reached for a canister on his belt.

Adrenaline flooded my system as I did what I've got a habit of in dangerous situations. Something stupid.

On paper, I should have died right there. He had a medium hardsuit, kinetic barriers, an assault rifle, multiple submission nets, and a pistol on his hip. Not to mention what was likely plenty of raiding experience. I, on the other hand, had exercise clothes, a longsword, and maybe a decade of spotty martial arts experience. All he had to do was raise the muzzle, tighten his finger, and triple whipcrack my sternum out my back in a bloody mist.

But batarian slavers are driven by profit, and it takes time to draw a submission net. Plenty of time to use three feet of sharp steel to good effect.

I made a deep, ugly advance, abandoning good technique for 'ohGodgottagetcloser', shoving my Alby forward in an unholy crossbreed of _Pflug_ and _Langort_, hoping like hell that I'd be able to keep his muzzle off me, and the girl too, if fate was feeling generous. He dropped the net in surprise, trying to bring the rifle online.

Somehow it worked, the edge of my blade biting into the rifle's polymer casing, leaving a shallow scar as I forced his rifle wide. His four eyes flashed black as I stepped in, and he snarled, baring his needle-sharp teeth. With my blade and tip out wide with his rifle, it looked like he was going to take a big bite out of my neck.

That was when I gave him a quick lesson in the etymology of the word 'pummel', grabbing his rifle with my left hand and driving the sword's pommel into his exposed cheekbone. The tough bone shattered under the impact of the mild steel counterweight, and he staggered back, dropping his rifle. I passed back into _vom Tag_ and offlined into a _Zwerchhau_ with the tip that took his lower pair of eyes, biting through the nose as it went. A gurgling scream ripped out of his throat, dueling with my cry as I snapped the Albion into a thoroughly wasteful _Oberhau_ that came right down on the crown of the slaver's head, cracking down through the skull to his upper lip before the blade bound in the bone.

The girl shrieked as blood sprayed everywhere, splashing over my glasses, blinding me quite handily. Swearing, I kicked at the raider's corpse, trying to recover my sword. "Look out!"

There was deeper roar of what I had now identified as mass accelerator fire as I pulled the sword free, and the left side of my body exploded into icy white agony, twisting me through the air and into the prefab's wall. My glasses went flying, revealing the blurry shape of a turian with a shotgun.

"Fucking pyjak," he spat in English, flanged voice making a hash of the curse. "Bet the boss would have liked you in the fight pits." He pointed the barrel right at my face. "Oh well."

Just as his talon tightened on the trigger, the girl charged into him. A nine-year old girl tackling a turian in combat armor. That's guts. It wasn't much of an impact, but the barrel moved enough that the shot slammed into my shoulder, sending my arm pinwheeling off and blood spraying everywhere.

I would have died there on Tiptree if it wasn't for the men and women of the _Mogadishu_. Through the haze of agony and dropping blood pressure as I slumped against the wall, I heard a rippling series of whipcracks and meathammer thunks as the turian came apart in a splash of cobalt blue all over me, splashing in my eyes and mouth. It burned.

"Tango down!" A soldier in familiar slate-gray armor popped the thermal clip from her gun, feeding in a new one, only to swear, dropping the rifle and clawing at a pack on her left thigh. I screwed my eyes shut as the burning got worse. "Holy Christ! CORPSMAN!" She sprinted over, ripping open a packet of medi-gel as she went. "Hang on, buddy, doc'll be right here. Stick with me, huh?" The self-sterilizing, pain-killing, quasi-sentient superglue went to work, but everything was fading, even as the marine slapped at my cheek. "Hey! Hey!" I couldn't see her hand…I couldn't see her.

Darkness closed over me. Soon sound and thought left as well.

* * *

"Doc, he's waking up!" Female, familiar.

My eyes snapped open, but darkness filled my vision. In a panic, I grabbed at my face, or at least tried to. My right arm jerked at a restraint. My left arm did nothing. Faced with these facts as well as the return of a galaxy full of aches and pains, I took eminently reasonable action. I screamed.

Or at least I tried to. What came out was more like a croak.

"Calm down, sir!" Male, new.

In no mood to do so, I thrashed about, croaking out my alarm.

"Dammit. 2 milligrams." I'll say this. Pharmacology has come a long way since my time. Whatever it was, it calmed me right on down. "Sir, you are still in bad shape. I'm going to need you to keep calm."

Cursing my lack of voice, I nodded, working my tongue to try and jump-start some saliva.

"Would you like some water?" I nodded. "Okay. Careful now." The voice placed a cup against my lips, tilting it so that I could sip. It tasted wonderful, and was all I could do to not grab the cup with my teeth and drain it. After a few seconds, I gained enough presence of mind to take a mouthful and swirl it around, restoring my voice.

"Where am I, and what happened to me?" I asked in a voice more scratch than words.

It was the female voice that answered. "You're on the SSV _Mogadishu_…"

The male voice cut in, irritated. "Lieutenant Durand, why don't you let me handle this."

"Fine." I heard footsteps and a door hiss open, along with a familiar voice asking "Is he…" before the closing door cut off the sound, leaving me with just the sounds of the sickbay.

"Right. Sir, my name is Surgeon Commander Dewey. I'm afraid that you were missing identification when we picked you up, and a DNA search was inconclusive. Can you give me your name?"

"Christopher Zachary Valentine."

"Very good. As the Lieutenant told you, you're in the sickbay of the _Mogadishu_. Do you remember what happened?"

"Ah, I was on Tiptree, I assume slavers made a raid, I attacked a batarian, and a turian shot me?" Something tickled at the back of my mind about my left arm at that. "And a marine blew the turian apart all over me. Was that the Lieutenant?"

"Yes. You were found with a young girl?"

"Saved my life. Is she okay?"

"Just fine, if a little shaken. Look Mr. Valentine, I'm not going to beat around the bush. You were in terrible shape when they got you here. If our corpsman hadn't slapped you in a stasis, you probably would have bled out, medigel or no." A detached part of my brain filed away the fact that the corpsman was a biotic, as I continued listening. "We're talking 5 millimeters deflection on that shotgun blast or 5 seconds later on the stasis and we wouldn't be having this conversation. As it was, I had you on life support immediately after the stasis came off, and we had to revive you four times during surgery."

"You have terrible bedside manner, Doctor. No bullshit, though, how bad?"

" The trauma was extensive. You took a pair of assault shotgun blasts at close range that tore your left side into hamburger, not to put too fine a point on it. You lost your shoulder, lung, plenty of ribs, took damage to the pericardial sac…"

"Lost my my left arm," I realized with a jolt that threatened to overwhelm me through the drugs.

"Yes. The second blast amputated your arm, along with destroying your shoulder. I could go on for fifteen minutes about the extent of the damage, but it all boils down to having a sausage bin where your chest and shoulder should be."

"And my eyes?"

Dewey sighed. "I've no doubt Marie saved your life when she shot that pirate, but between a mild allergic reaction to turian blood and part of the hardsuit's power supply getting in your eyes and mouth, I wasn't able to save your eyes. Your voice should heal in time, but eyes are more delicate."

A wave of depression swept past the drugs. "So I'm blind and crippled. What a day." I heaved a sigh. "Look doc, if it's all the same to you, I think I'm going to just cry for a few minutes, assuming I didn't lose my lachrymal glands too." At a moment of silence, I let out a curse. "Fuck my life. Them too?"

"No."

"No?"

He sighed. "Look, I'm about to get onto sensitive ground here, and I don't know a good goddamn about your politics. Like I said, you were in bad shape, and the ground team wanted you alive. Something about facing down pirates with a sword." He started to pace. "Normally, I would have cloned tissue on hand to effect repairs until a full replacement limb could be grown, but you're not part of the ship's complement, and I didn't have any bloody time with you in that kind of shape. You were going to die if I didn't do anything." The pacing got more agitated.

"If it's anything, I'm happy to be alive. What did you do?"

"My specialty when I'm not shipping out on special operations frigates is the development of combat-grade cybernetic prosthetics for the Systems Alliance Bureau of Medicine. I had a few models along to tinker with during downtime." There was a long pause filled with shifting feet. "Now, I've broken more regulation than I can count, I'm sure a few laws, and saved your life."

"You…_cybed _me?"

"And fuck, you're a human purist, aren't you?" The pacing started again. "Look, don't worry, we can get cloned tissue worked up, it'll just take time, and some pretty extensive surgery. Son of a bitch, how'd they talk me into this?"

"You _cybed_ me! Why the hell aren't they on?" A broad smile broke across my face.

"Fucking PR nightmare, dishonorable discharge, lose my license…" The pacing stopped dead. "…come again?"

"Why aren't they on? God, man, I thought I was screwed."

"Yeah…me too. You're okay with this?"

"A lot more than being killed or crippled by some pirate bastard. Look, if not the arm, can you at least get the eyes on? The drugs are good, but I'd really like to see before I go crazy again."

"Right." I heard the sound I'd end up associating with omni-tool activation. "Your eyes should be calibrated to your visual cortex, but there's plenty of room for error on this, so we might need to do some adjustments. Here goes." Blue text flashed across the blackness, scrolling through a boot sequence. And then the inside of the sickbay snapped into view, sharper than anything I had ever seen. Dewey frowned and tapped a few buttons on his omnitool. "How is the image?"

"Better than my old eyes." I turned my head to take in the sickbay, which looked a bit more used than the _Normandy_'s from the series. "A bit disorienting, actually."

"I can step down the quality, but you should be able to adjust with some time and a few headaches."

"That's nothing new," I assured him. "I'll get used to it."

"Good. Ah, another thing. To make sure the implants took, I had to apply the military-grade gene tweaks, but I guess if you're okay with implants, that should be simple. The headaches shouldn't bother you anymore."

I tried to whistle and failed. "Thanks. Anything else I should know?"

He rolled his eyes. "Where do I begin? Right. You've got Mk. 7 Mod. 42 Heimdall model eyes now. They're capable of microscopic and telescopic focal changes, and can be spectrum shifted to catch IR through UV, or all at once, though that one takes some real getting used to. Standard keeps some UV sensitivity on for an easier time dealing with hanar. It'll show up as a silvery color. The Mk. 7 is also equipped with low-light capability, as well as a flash shield for flashbangs and the like. AR capabilities can be toggled on should you wish, giving you all sorts of options with the right firmware. Most commands are capable of being triggered with an omni-tool or with physical mnemonics of your orbital muscles. We'll go over the most important ones later. What else?" He tapped his chin. "Right. The Heimdalls are as EMP shielded and hackproof as we can make them…"

"But there's always a war going on there."

He nodded. "I'd say it would take a pretty smart quarian or salarian to hack them, but it's possible. Hard as we can make it, but possible." He smirked. "And harder in your case." At the raise of my eyebrow, he nodded at the cybernetic arm that lay inert on the sheets, looking vaguely like a tan sculpture in alloy and polymer of an idealized human arm. "That's a Gilgamesh Mk. 3 Mod. 5. An omnitool is integrated directly into the forearm, and I ran a hardline to the Heimdalls."

"Nice."

"It's a custom job blending Ariake and Sirta architecture, so it should trip them up. There's no direct wireless access to the Heimdalls with this set-up. The omni is untested, so there's possibility for anomalies. Tell me if anything seems strange."

"Right now, I feel like a lean, mean seeing machine," I joked. "But okay."

He laughed. "Right. Well, I can bring the Gilgamesh online as well, but I haven't finished the skinjob on it, so you're going to be lacking any sensation other than kinesthetic."

I shrugged. "Better than nothing."

"Okay, but I want you to be _careful_. The Gilgamesh is a combat chassis, and easily capable of doing some real damage, even without the omni. Don't grab anything. Don't move it fast. And for pity's sake, keep your eyes on it. We've only got the one sickbay." At my nod, he sighed and pushed a haptic button. "Give it a second to boot."

My arm snapped back into awareness, even if I couldn't feel the sheets it rested on. In a burst of exuberance, I jerked my arms up. My right was held fast by the restraint. The left parted the tough polymer with a strong tug. "Oops?" I grinned sheepishly at Dewey.

He rolled his eyes. "Patients. I'm going to take the myomer offline."

"It was a simple mistake! Don't leave me with one arm again."

"I'll leave the kinesthetic feedback. But I wasn't kidding. The Gilgamesh is not a toy." Another button press and my arm fell limp, but I could still feel it.

"Right. Is there anything else I should know?"

"Plenty. You're sporting a new lung, a heart mod, and reinforcement so the Gilgamesh doesn't tear you apart. That's all hooked in to the integral omni for primary control. There are back-ups, but you don't want to fiddle with the user settings beyond shell level. There could be some real problems. Like I said, this was an emergency and the architecture's kinda a kludge."

"Okay. Any other heart stopping surprises?"

"Look over the files in your omni. And before you ask for a glove, I gave you right-hand haptics. I'll unstrap you, then I've got to report to the Captain. Can I trust you to not break anything before I get back?" I gave him a meek nod and he undid the restraint. "Good. Lieutenant Durand might stop in. I gather she feels guilty about your eyes. If you need anything, page Lieutenant Alenko. He's the corpsman who brought you in, and should be able to attend to any minor troubles."

He walked out the door as my eyes tried to go wide. That snippet of voice through the door fell into place. Kaidan Alenko. One of the main secondary character in the series. Only the drugs kept me from panicking, visions of butterflies setting off hurricanes swirling through my head. Like I said earlier, I was convinced interference was a bad thing. I knew how things would play out, or thought I did.

I activated the omni, simply to think about something else. What I saw stunned me. Dewey wasn't kidding about the extent of the cybernetics. A good 20 to 25 percent of my torso, synthetic. And all of it tied into an omni that combined two companies' architectures and could have anomalies. I reminded myself that it was simply the nature of prototype technology, and that no matter what, it was keeping me alive, seeing, and with a total of four limbs, even if I couldn't move one right then.

Still, if I had been a human purist…whoa. He was putting it lightly when he said it'd take extensive surgery to swap over to cloned parts. I was about to look up the mnemonics for the Heimdalls when the door hissed open and a woman in old-style Alliance BDUs walked in.

Her red hair was cut short, and she had an odd tan bar across her eyes, the characteristic Onxy exo-tan, the rest of her face pale with a sprinkling of freckles. "I hope Doc Dewey wasn't too much of an ass."

I shifted my attention away from the screen and shrugged. "I'm seeing, have two arms, and am coming down off of a truly excellent sedative. I can deal." I offered my hand. "Chris Valentine. Thanks for saving my ass."

She shook it. "Marie Durand. Sorry I wasn't there sooner."

"Eh, I'll live." True enough. "Besides, I think I came out alright for getting shot."

"Well, you can thank Alenko for that, more than me. Doc told me the eyes were kinda my fault for going cyclic like that."

"Well, I don't need glasses anymore. Net gain, I say."

"I guess."

There was a long pause. "Look," I said. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but what's going to happen to me? I guess I understand why I'm in a frigate sickbay, but I'm wearing a lot of Alliance military tech now, and frigates aren't exactly a shuttle service for civilians."

She laughed. "The cybernetics will be combat-lossed out, so don't worry about that. You're not going to see any repo men from Naval Intelligence. As for the 'shuttle service', that's up to you."

"Huh?"

"We're getting recalled to Arcturus Station now that Tiptree is secured with the _Berlin_ riding high orbit. We can drop you back on Tiptree, or you can keep under Doc Dewey's care till we hit Arcturus."

"That sounds good. Also, how much trouble would it be to get an application for citizenship drawn up? I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I ended up on Tiptree, and I'd like to get myself under the Alliance's umbrella."

"Shouldn't be too much trouble. The Alliance is pretty easy about letting humans in."

"Good."

"Anything else I can get you?"

"I don't suppose my Alby survived the fight, did it?" That got a blank look. "My sword?"

"Oh, right! I'll ask the squad if anyone grabbed it."

"Thanks. And thanks again for saving my ass."

"No problem." She walked out, only to be replaced by Kaidan Alenko.

"Good to see you awake," he said without preamble.

"Good to be alive. I hear I have you to thank for that."

He shrugged. "It's the job."

"Still, thanks."

"Couldn't let someone who took on a batarian slaver with a sword for a little girl die like that." He looked me over. "Sorry we couldn't do more."

"Well, I'm not bloody hamburger, so I'll count my blessings."

He chuckled. "_Bloody_ hamburger, no. And I suppose the glowing eyes are pretty striking."

It suddenly hit me that I hadn't seen myself since I woke up. "Glowing? Do you have a mirror?" Kaidan nodded over at a side table.

I looked rough. Fresh surgical scars surrounded my new eyes, which glowed a pale azure. My cheeks had the gaunt look of someone who had been bedridden for a week or so. Explained why I felt so bad…aside from the getting shot. Between the scars, eyes, and my head being shaved bald, I hardly recognized myself. "Death warmed over," I mumbled.

"That's not a bad way to describe it."

"Hoo." I looked away from the mirror. "Getting shot sucks. I need to do less of it in the future."

"Sounds like a good plan." He clapped my organic shoulder. "I suggest you stick to it."

Even then, I knew there was no way I could.

* * *

A/N: Well, that's the opening. Tune in next time for adjusting to cybernetics, military bureaucracy, snark, and a plan that's destined to go horribly awry!

In all honesty, I hope you enjoyed the first chapter and look forward to the next one. There's all sorts of fun down the road, and I hope that you'll enjoy reading it as much as I'm going to enjoy writing it.

For anyone confused about the German in the fic, there is a glossary following this author's note.

Any and all feedback is welcome, especially critical feedback. And for anyone who enjoys a gimmick, there's two obscure canon characters in this chapter. See if you can spot them!

Till next time!

* * *

Glossary:

_Knust des Fechten_: "Art of Combat" A martial art originating in the 14th century, detailing the use of various knightly weapons for both armored and unarmored combat. The art centered around the use of the longsword.

_Meister Liechtenauer_: Johannes Liechtenauer. A 14th century swordmaster, credited with the codification of the German "Art of Combat". Considered the grandmaster of the style, all recovered manuals note his founding role.

_Pflug_: "Plow" One of the basic guards of longsword fencing. The hilt is held with the pommel at the level of the waist, in front of the rear leg. The tip of the blade is extended out and aimed at the opponent's throat.

_Langort_: "Long Point" A so-called 'transitional' guard, with the blade fully extended. Most full cuts pass through _Langort_.

_vom Tag_: "From The Roof" Another basic guard. The sword is held above the head, tip back at a forty-five degree angle. The guard is modified when wearing armor, moving to above the back shoulder, so as to keep the armor from binding.

_Zwerchau_: "Thwarting Hew" One of the five 'master hews', this hew is a high cut that is sometimes referred to as a helicopter cut, due to the motion of the blade above the fighter's head. Depending on the opening, it is either performed with the forward or reverse edge of the blade.

_Oberhau_: "Over Hew" A hew coming down from above.

* * *

_Another fine product from Valentine Diverse Optics_


	2. Intercept Course 2

Going In For Guns: A Memoir of the Reaper Wars

Book 1: Intercept Course

Maj. Christopher "Nice Boots" Z. Valentine

Systems Alliance Marines Tactical Aerospace Command (ret.)

Systems Alliance Naval Intelligence (aux./ret.)

Citadel Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance (aux.)

* * *

Kaidan left after giving my vitals a check, leaving me alone to think. I needed to lay some ground rules for myself. So I had shown up in what looked to be a fictional universe. I knew the Reapers were coming, and Commander Shepard and the crews of the _Normandy_ were going to be the linchpin on which everything turned. Shepard got it done just fine without me in canon, and while I wasn't useless in close combat, that turian slaver had made it abundantly clear that a longsword fencer was about as useful on the modern battlefield as a screen door on a submarine, even with my other martial arts experience. I wasn't about to be saving the galaxy anytime soon. Sure, I had shot pistol, rifles, and shotguns before. I hadn't so much as _touched_ a mass accelerator, discounting keeping that slaver's gun offline.

I would be dead weight. And if I did end up on the _Normandy_, and was very, very lucky, I might avoid getting someone else killed when I bought it. I needed to get the hell away from canon, not have a major secondary character as my nurse.

So what the hell could I do? I drummed my fingers on my new alloy wrist. Well, I remembered the basic math and concepts behind weaponizing a pulse laser. If I could put that technology on the scene, and encourage the development of lasers as a primary weapons system, that could give the Citadel forces a major combat multiplier against the Reapers, letting them ignore the barriers that stopped mass accelerator fire cold.

But weapons development required capital, and I was hardly a physicist, even if I ignored the radical differences that being able to break the lightspeed barrier would imply. I didn't even have anything to sell, unless my Albion showed up, and selling a sword that had fought so well? That felt blasphemous. Hell, I had spilled blood with that blade. I had killed with it.

That stopped me cold.

I had killed someone. No question about it, not like that street brawl. I had split that slaver's skull with an _Oberhau_. That's about as dead as you get.

Maybe it was a trace of the drugs still working on me, but I didn't feel much of anything. I had always been more than a little willing to accept that fighting meant injury and possibly death. I'd never been in a real fight where I didn't use the most effective means at my disposal to end things right then and there. I had _broken_ people, and I knew it. How was this that different?

_Besides,_ said a nasty voice in the back of my mind, _it's not like he didn't deserve it. Forget that you were in a fight for your life, he was a __**slaver. **__There's no need to waste pity on him. It was self-defense and justified at that. The only mistake was finishing with an Oberhau, instead of taking his throat. Getting the sword stuck cost you._

I looked down at the Gilgamesh. That was true. It had cost me. I sighed. I almost wished I could feel bad about the kill, but that was that. Apparently I just wasn't very paragon.

* * *

It took some minutes before I could set aside that line of thought and focus back on planning. Lasers would take too many resources that I just didn't have, no matter how promising a return on investment they looked to be. You just can't get something from nothing.

What else was there? Even if I could bring the money together to land on my feet, there was simply no way that I could live quietly, knowing that the apocalypse was coming in…I checked my omni-tool…six years. That's the trouble with knowledge like I had. It's the kind of thing you just can't sit on. You've got to do something.

The problem, of course, being that everything hinged on the bloody _Normandy_.

I moved my finger drumming to my shoulder. And that was the crux of my problem. If I wanted to do something I knew would be helpful, I would have to risk screwing up a series of events that would lead to victory.

I frowned. This was all assuming a best case scenario where I wasn't in a metric fuckton of trouble for being a non-Alliance civilian on a special ops frigate with military cybernetics replacing a significant portion of my body. I had my doubts that the old 'combat lossing out' trick would work on prototypes assigned to a man who wasn't even in the direct combat. At least they probably wouldn't sic a psychotic, singing Anthony Stewart Head to vivisect me to recover them. That got a shudder.

The whole planning idea was starting to fall apart. I didn't have the resources to make any significant 'off-camera' changes, and going 'on-camera' looked like a recipe for disaster. And I wasn't going to sit and do nothing, for the same reason I didn't toss down the sword and surrender when the batarian showed up. If there was something I had in me, it was to fight.

That's when the smile spread across my face. I was an idiot. There was a simple solution.

I wanted to learn enough to become an effective combatant on the modern battlefield. I wanted a purpose. The Alliance wouldn't want to let the cybernetics in my body go, and was understrength for its mission. And the kicker, I thought the Alliance was a government worth supporting.

Back before I showed up on Tiptree, I had considered joining my county's military. I had passed. The way it was being employed at the time was not something I supported. But the Alliance? Yes. That, I could support. And, if I'm being brutally honest, age had burned some idealism out of me.

I flicked the omni over to the extranet. I had some research to do.

* * *

"I understand that you're going to be staying in my care, Mr. Valentine," said Dewey without preamble as he re-entered the sick bay some hours later.

I closed the holographic screen and looked over with a shrug. "Seemed the thing to do. Who am I going to find on Tiptree that could work with this?" I indicated the cybernetics.

"Fair enough. Catching up on some reading?"

"Refreshing myself on eezo physics." Or teaching myself, as the case was. He gave me a look that said _'What, really?'_ louder than a voice ever could. "Yeah, really. What'd you expect me to do, watch _Fleet and Flotilla_?"

"Honestly, I figured on you trying to figure out how to activate the Gilgamesh's myomer."

"Yeah, mess around in an omnitool that's doing the primary computing for my eyes, lung, heart, and spine. Brilliant plan," I said, acid dripping from my tone.

"A patient with actual patience. Wonders will never cease."

I groaned. "How long were you saving that one up?"

"Halfway through my first residency…12 years, give or take?"

"Riiiight."

"Okay, ten minutes. Department head meetings might be necessary, but they're boring as sin."

I smiled. "If you think sin is boring, you're probably not doing it right."

"Smartass." Dewey sat down at his desk, scrolling through some files on the monitor. "Judging by Alenko's readings, you should be able to get off bedrest soon. Though I warn you, you're not likely to have much mobility."

"Right." I gestured at my deactivated arm. "How about this?"

"Going to keep that offline for the moment." He frowned. "I think we might be safest bringing the myomer online after I've finished the skinjob."

"Great." I bit my lip. "I don't suppose you could turn it on with low power or something like that?"

He shook his head. "No." At my raised eyebrow, he went on. "Low power would be a very different experience from full power. Any given nerve impulse would give much lesser results at low power, and I don't want to mistrain your reflexes. That could get messy when we switched to full power."

"That's…a really good point. I can wait."

"Not that you had much of a choice."

"No."

Dewey sat back. "Well, don't let me interrupt your extranet time. You'll be due for another dose of therapeutic retroviruses in about an hour, but there's nothing urgent that I can see for the moment."

I reopened the omnitool screen. "I'm kinda surprised the captain hasn't come to speak to me."

"Captain Penkala is a busy man. I imagine he'll be down soon, now that we're ready to begin the cruise for the relay."

"Mmm." I reburied myself in the primer on eezo and mass effect physics. I figured I had a lot to learn if I didn't want to be thought of as a blithering moron. And that ran counter to my plans. No time to waste.

* * *

An hour and a half later, the door hissed open. "Is he awake, doctor?"

"See for yourself, sir. He's been buried in that omni since I came back. Didn't so much as break for the injections." True enough, though that was more to focus on something other than the needles. I never did well with needles.

"I always was a reader," I noted, looking up from an example on field shaping that would have bent my brain before Tiptree. That, in of itself, was a line of questions to Dewey, but later. Right now, the god of the ship had walked in the door. "Hello, Captain."

He grunted, folding his arms. A pair of hazel eyes bored into me from a café-au-lait face. A shock of raven hair was pulled back into a queue at the back of his neck, reminding me again that the Alliance's grooming regs were awfully loose for my standards. A streak of white shot back over his left temple, mirroring a puckered scar that peeked out from under the hair. "Hello, Mr. Valentine. I don't suppose that you know why I'm down here?"

I shook my head. "No sir. In your place, I might want to set rules, gather information, or just get a sense of me. But I couldn't say."

"Mmm." He walked over, unfolding his arms. "You're not wrong on any of those counts, though looking you in the eye to gain understanding is rather tricky at the moment." I filed the 'at the moment' away for future analysis. "But above all, it is a matter of principle. I am the captain, and that means I must know what is going on with my ship."

I nodded.

"Good." He sat down on a bed next to mine. "Now, as you're not Alliance military, I can't let you into certain areas of the ship. So, engineering and CIC are off-limits, along with gunnery and sensors. The armory is, of course, restricted as well. Other than that, you have free run, so long as there is an Alliance soldier present. You are not to be alone, except in quarters or the mess. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Lieutenant Durand informs me that you wanted to apply for Alliance citizenship?"

"That's right."

"Do you mind enlightening me as to why?"

I bit my tongue. The real reason was I wanted to get some stability, having been thrown from my home universe in the space between breaths, but that wasn't going to get me the kind of psych evaluation I would need. "Ah…I…" I sighed and looked back at the captain. If I was going to lie, I might as well do it before the guy had my measure. And sprinkle in enough truth that it was plausible. "Captain, I have no idea how I ended up on Tiptree."

"Coming down off a bender on a new world with a sword you've never seen, in the middle of a slave raid?"

I shook my head. "No, the sword's mine. It's my favorite cutter. But as far as my memory's concerned, I was walking around a corner one minute, then on Tiptree the next. I think I would have remembered at least part of a bender if I had gone on one." I gave a sheepish grin. "I always did when I drank before."

"It's possible that he suffered memory loss," put in Dewey. "He was under stasis for an extended period and cyanotic when we brought him out. Add that together with his deaths on the table…"

Penkala nodded. "Thank you, Surgeon Commander."

I shrugged as best I could. "For all I know, I could have been picked up by slavers a long time ago and dropped as a shock troop. I was at home before."

"No slaving implants or associated trauma," put in Dewey crisply.

"The sword also put that to the lie," pointed out the Captain. "My family has one of the same forge's blades. It's a nearly eighty-year-old heirloom." I nearly burst out laughing. I would be picked up by the one captain whose family owned an Albion! "Mr. Valentine's sword has significant value."

I gave another one-shoulder shrug. "Like I said, I don't know what happened to me, and the Alliance not only saved me from getting executed but fixed the damage I did by nearly getting myself killed. There might be people out in the Traverse who aren't too keen on the Alliance, but count me in the cheerleaders. I'd like to be part of something good like this, maybe start paying back a little bit of the karmic debt I owe?" I suppressed a smile as Penkala and Dewey looked at each other with appraising looks. Penkala looked back at me.

"Well, Mr. Valentine, I am Captain Zeljko Penkala of the SSV _Mogadishu_, and I am pleased to welcome you aboard." He extended a hand and I shook it. "We'll get your citizenship application set up shortly, and as soon as Doctor Dewey clears you, we'll have you out with the crew."

"Thank you sir." Penkala nodded and left.

"Going to rebury yourself in the extranet?" asked Dewey.

"Not just this second." I nevertheless re-opened the omni's screen.

"Miracle of miracles, though I'm not sure I trust you with the screen open."

"I actually had a question for you."

"Shoot." He winced. "Sorry, phrasing."

I shook my head. "Don't worry about it. You said you gave me gene therapy?"

"Yeah. Why, you don't have a problem with it, do you?"

"No, I don't. I just wanted to know what it would entail."

He brought up his own omnitool and flicked over a file. "This outlines the standard MarsGene package we give to all Alliance recruits. Improved adrenal response, clotting, greater muscle density. There's also a sensory acuity package. Sight, hearing, and smell all see improvements, though sight is the greatest increase, and that's rather irrelevant for you. It also covers the genetic disease screening all Alliance citizens have the right to." He frowned. "Understand, that's for the Ares Mk. 7 Mod. 0."

"What did I get?"

"Mod. 3. It builds on some of the intangible improvements that MarsGene doesn't list in the sales catalogue. We use it on cybernetics patients to help cut down on the variance on the man-machine interface."

I pursed my lips. "Are you talking about mental improvements?"

He rocked an open hand side to side. "Neurological, technically, but anything neuro that's this broad-based is going to affect mental attributes. The package is supposed to boost neural transmission speeds, which leads to faster reflexes, and often, thought processes. There's also an optimization of neurotransmitters, but that's pretty hit or miss, so I really couldn't give you a solid prognosis on what you're likely to see there." He paged through files on his omnitool. "I think I have the studies on here if you'd like them."

If I still had my original eyes, they would have bugged out. As it was, I could feel the flesh around the Heimdalls complaining that they hadn't had enough time to heal. I composed my face as he smiled and brought up the file he was looking for. "I don't know how much I'll understand, but sure." I set the file aside for future reading. "How quickly do you see effects?"

"Well, there's a million-credit question. Short answer is, I don't know. In the general population, it can take up to a year for the package to be fully realized, but first effects can show up within a week."

"That fast?"

He nodded. "It's all to do with how well the treatment takes and where your body is in its cycle of repair and growth." His lip twitched. "Given the amount of regenviruses we've pumped into you, I'd wager that you're going to start seeing effects soon."

I gave a sheepish grin. "Well, math is a lot easier than it used to be. I'm pretty non-neurotypical. Was. I don't know."

"Hot damn. Well, that's something for the studies. Shame we don't have your anamnesis." At my blank look, he elaborated. "Patient history."

"Ah. Sorry. I can recite the psych side of things pretty well, but the rest is, ah…fuzzy."

He waved it off. "I'll get what you can remember later. For now, though, and speaking of the regenviruses, I bet you're hungry."

I opened my mouth to object when I realized that he was dead right. I was ravenous. "Starved. Please tell me I can eat."

He laughed. "Would I have brought it up if you couldn't? Give me a second, and I'll be back with something."

What Dewey brought back was standard frigate fare. Bland, but nutritious, and packed with energy. I raised an eyebrow at being given a biotic's ration, but when the doctor pointed out that my body was undergoing rapid healing, I had to admit it made sense. My body needed the energy, and more than that, the raw materials to put itself straight. Hence, a biotic-size portion of beef ravioli.

I'd love to say that I exhibited perfect table manners. In all honesty, I was down an arm and feeling like I hadn't eaten in days, which was accurate. Given that, I forgot my distaste for tomato sauce, and shoveled the pillows of death down. Objectively, there's no way those things tasted good, but if you had asked me, I would have sworn to you that they were the most delicious thing I had in years.

"Well, they say hunger is the best spice," said Dewey with a chuckle, picking at what looked like a fish dish.

I paused in my assault on the ration. "I can confirm that."

"You do realize you've got a bit of sauce on your…well, everywhere?" he asked with a shit-eating grin.

I rolled my eyes, pleased that I could still do that. "Jackass."

"And here I was going to do some tests to start on the skinjob. Oh well."

I put down my fork and wiped my face after a fruitless attempt to get my left arm to grab the napkin. Putting the napkin back, I schooled my face into a thoughtful look and pointed at him. "Its things like that that elicit the previous observation, you know."

"Oh, I know." The grin hadn't budged. "I went into the military because I have such crappy bedside manner, you know."

"Really?"

He scoffed. "Well, that and they're the bleeding edge in cybernetics." He nodded at me. "And why are you thinking about joining?"

"Did I say I was thinking about joining?" I tried for guileless.

"Right, and that talk about karmic debt to the captain?" He took a bite of the fish. "Please. I'm not stupid."

I nodded. "Yeah, I did say that." I chewed on ravioli as I formulated my answer. "I guess I feel like I've got that debt…"

"No shit?" A disbelieving look contorted his face.

"No shit." I affirmed. "Not to mention I'm feeling rather adrift, not knowing how I got to Tiptree, I don't have capital to provide for myself until I can land a solid job, and I'm lacking too much in the way of marketable job skills." I pointed the fork at him. "And I think I made it clear to all and sundry that it's my inclination to fight."

He chuckled. "Yeah, you could say that."

I scraped up some of the sauce and sucked it off the fork. God was I hungry. "More than that though, I was just in the middle of a slave raid. That's the kind of wake-up call you don't ignore. If the universe isn't screaming for me to do something to oppose it, I'm not sure what its saying." I smirked. "Besides, I bet there's less fallout for you guys if this tech," I tapped the Gilgamesh, "stays safely in the Alliance, right?"

"Right." He sighed. "I just hate to see you toss yourself right into the line of fire after we did so much to save your life."

I moderated the smirk into an understanding smile. "I promise not to paint myself blue, grab an even bigger sword, and charge a krogan clan in the buff by myself."

That got a sharp bark of laughter. "That would certainly be a sight."

I let the smirk come back. "Yup. That'd be a whole mess of naked krogan."

"That's an image I could do without."

"You're welcome. But in all seriousness, I was thinking of a primary MVC that didn't involve B. I'd rather have the balance of technology firmly on my side the next time muzzles start flashing." I frowned as my fork scraped against a bare tray. "Damn. I'm still hungry."

Dewey laughed. "Tell you what. You can have mine." He placed the tray in front of me. "It claims to be prejak teriyaki, but I remain unconvinced. Eat up, and I'll get the sensors together. Sound good?"

I grinned. "I like the balance of labor anyway." I was certainly curious as to what paddlefish tasted like.

* * *

A/N: And there's the second chapter. Not too much to say this time, other than thank you all for the response, and thanks again to Herr Wozzeck for another vetting of the chapter with an extraordinary turnaround time. Comments and criticism are welcomed as always. I hope you are continuing to enjoy reading as much as I am writing this. Next time we'll actually get out of the medbay and start exploring the _Mogadishu_, as well as see the return of Durand and Kaidan. There's plenty more story to come folks! Till next time!

* * *

_Another fine product from Valentine Diverse Optics_


	3. Intercept Course 3

A/N: Yes, it lives. Four, nearly five months? Well, I'm back, and I hope you enjoy what follows.

* * *

Going In For Guns: A Memoir of the Reaper Wars

Book 1: Intercept Course

Maj. Christopher "Nice Boots" Z. Valentine

Systems Alliance Marines Tactical Aerospace Command (ret.)

Systems Alliance Naval Intelligence (aux./ret.)

Citadel Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance (aux.)

* * *

I'd say his Illuminated Primacy got ripped off. But different strokes for different folks, especially when one's an ape offshoot and the other's a sapient jelly. In all honesty, I actually enjoy a good prejak teriyaki. It's no salmon teriyaki, but good, nonetheless. Unless it's the B-rat version served in field kitchens and frigates across the Alliance. That stuff is nasty. I could tell that even through the haze of hunger dulling my taste buds.

I still wolfed it down.

What? I was hungry. We've gone over this.

It also helped me try to ignore the thoroughly odd sensations I was getting from my arm as Dewey attached the sensor rig, an involved process that consisted of far too many arm movements for my liking.

Getting cybernetics can be a real godsend, but no matter what the vids say, they are not plug-and-play replacements. There's all sorts of things that can go wrong, no matter how good your doc, and Dewey was one of the very best, but there's no getting around the fact that the limb just isn't the original. Hence the need for adjustments, and skinjobs after you're conscious.

Of course, this leaves you with a very disconcerting period where the only sense you get from your arm, leg, whatever, is kinesthetic. You know the arm's there, you know what position it's in, but you're getting nothing else from it. No temperature, pain, or brush of air. No sensation at all. If you've never experienced it, you probably don't get it. You don't think about most of the sensation you feel on a day to day basis, but trust me, you notice it when it's missing.

So I had the majority of the sensation in my arm cut, lacked any control over it, and could feel Dewey moving it around, occasionally in motions that were subtly, and sometimes not-so-subtly outside of my old range of movement. Disconcerting, to say the least, especially given my martial arts training. I had spent far too much time in one joint lock or another over the years, and my nerves were jangling with wrongness. Still, martial arts teach discipline, and I was able to bear the discomfort in stoic silence.

"Dewey, are you damn well done yet?"

Okay, so that's a lie.

"Almost." He yanked my arm straight and rotated it.

"You said that ten minutes ago."

"Oh, just keep eating the teriyaki," he huffed, connecting a sensor lead.

"I ran out of it five minutes ago." I pointed with my fleshy hand. "See?"

"Now what are we going to shove in your mouth to shut you up? I'm not a pediatrician, I don't have lollypops."

"Yeah, I think we're both going to be happier if I don't indulge myself with that opening." He gave me an odd look. "Oh come on. That was wide open for a joke."

He shook his head. "I'm sure I can find a tongue depressor somewhere…"

"Really?"

"Or maybe a rectal thermometer."

"I'll be good."

"I doubt that, but I really am almost done." He connected another lead and nodded with a pleased look. "Right. Give me a second to calibrate." He adjusted a few things on his omni-tool. "Okay, now let's put this sling on…" He suited action to words. "…right."

"All done?"

"All done."

"You're not fucking with me?"

"Nope. Now, you've got a choice to make. There's two ways we can run this. Either I pulse the rig to map every sensation you're capable of feeling at once, and you scream and pass out, or I do the subconscious route, and it takes longer."

"I like the second choice."

"There's hope for you yet. Do you still want to join the military?"

"Yes."

His omni flickered back to life and he brought it to his mouth. "Patient's recovery proceeds apace. Cognitive function is advanced, but plagued by a persistent flash of utter stupidity in a field of otherwise rational, logical decisions. I have high hopes for the efficacy of surgical intervention."

"And here I thought you weren't fucking with me."

He grinned, shutting off the omni. "You believed me?"

"Yeah, that was stupid. So how long till you have a baseline?"

He shrugged. "Baseline isn't hard. But we're going to need a more complete scan, and that will probably take the whole trip to Arcturus. Which is probably for the best. With access to my lab, I can do a much better job."

I sighed. "I'll probably thank you for it in the long run, but it is a pain to have an arm and not be able to use it."

"Think of it as a cast."

"Most casts don't have quite so many wires. I look like I dipped my arm in squid ink noodles."

"Everyone's a critic." He shook his head. "Why don't you get some more extranet time in? I figure you won't have much time for it tomorrow."

I flicked the omnitool open, raising an eyebrow. "And why's that?"

"Well, I had figured on clearing you to get out of the bed tomorrow, assuming that everything proceeds well." He nodded at the omni. "Look up the mnemonics for the Heimdalls. You'll want to practice them soon. Better to get the reflexes ingrained early."

I chuckled. "Guess it'll give me something to do while I'm looking around." I brought up a list.

"Be careful of sensory overload. Your visual cortex is still accustomed to your old eyes. That's where the disorientation came from."

"Yeah, how long does that last?" You wouldn't think there would be anything to complain about with getting a sudden upgrade to your visual acuity, but then, you'd be wrong.

"Depends on brain plasticity. You're pretty young, so it shouldn't take more than a week or so to adjust to visilight. IR and UV is a big 'I don't know'. That's pretty much unique to every patient. Still, the younger, the better."

"Swell." I resigned myself to a week of headaches. It wasn't a new concept, but hardly a welcome one.

"Most people do find it easier to restrict themselves to one spectrum at a time," offered Dewey. "It helps the brain frame things in terms of what it's used to."

"I'll keep that in mind." I made a mental note to not mess about with UV and IR. Visible light was what I had seen for better than two decades. As cool as it would be to see all Predator-style, I figured that I didn't need a further headache to try a novelty. "I figured that I would start with the AR functions, actually."

He nodded. "That's not a bad place to start. It can be disorienting, but it normally isn't such a strain. More 'sit down to catch your bearings', less 'scream and pass out' on the sensory overload scale."

"Charming." I buried myself in the list of mnemonics, before keeping on with my studies on eezo physics.

* * *

I didn't get much sleep that night. God knows I was tired, but a perfect storm of circumstance was conspiring against me.

Point the first. I had very little time to educate myself on the ins and outs of the universe I had found myself in. Hence the eezo studies, as well as an extranet dive to pick up on history that hadn't been detailed in my home universe. Luckily for me, computer logic and interfaces hadn't changed in the century or so I had skipped. Sure, now it was a combination of holography and haptics, but that was form, not function. Given my tendency towards hyperfocus, that could have kept me up on its own.

Point the second. I was excited. Those who have spent any time in a hospital know that it's far too easy to find yourself bored out of your skull with the simple amount of time you spend waiting, lying in the confines of a bed. Sure, the extranet research I was doing helped, but getting up and moving? Whole different animal. Not to mention the fact that I was actually going to get the chance to walk around an Alliance frigate. Sure, most of the really interesting sections were going to be barred to me, but hey, I was a military geek.

Finally, just when I had convinced myself that the lack of sensation from my left arm was normal, I was starting to feel the oddest brushes of something from the cybernetic. Apparently, the 'subconscious' mapping routine wasn't quite. Either that or I was going stir-crazy. That was Dewey's theory when I told him he might have miscalibrated the mapping routine. I still think he didn't want to admit to screwing up. Though everything did end up feeling right when I finally got the skinjob, so who knows?

* * *

Breakfast claimed to be a pair some kind of sausage, egg, and cheese burritos with various additions. Both were devoured in under thirty seconds a pop. The regenviruses were still active, and I was running one hell of a hunger, all things considered.

"Funny."

I raised an eyebrow at Dewey. "What is?"

"Oh, nothing. I just don't remember installing a vacuum." He finished a sweep with his omnitool. "Looks like things are proceeding nicely."

"So I can get out of bed?" I tried to not beg.

From the look on his face, I probably failed. "It is my considered medical opinion that you are fit to hobble about the ship. Slowly."

"Joy and wonderment." I swung my legs out of the bed. "Do I get pants?"

* * *

As a matter of fact, I did get pants. Even better, I got a shirt too. Given the rather sweatpants and t-shirt feel, I pegged them as spare PT gear. Hardly fashionable, but comfortable enough. I would get very familiar with them within the upcoming year.

I wasn't thinking about that, though. I was too busy looking around as Marie helped me hobble down the hallway. She had met me at the door to the medbay with a shrug and a smile. "Skipper said you could use an escort. Looks to me like you could use a shoulder to lean on." I took her up on the offer. Dewey hadn't been kidding. My mobility was crap, with shaky legs and far less energy than I was used to.

"So where do you want to go first?"

I gave her an awkward shrug. "Anywhere. Even this hall is bliss, compared to being cooped up in that bed."

"Mess hall?"

I started to shake my head before realizing that I was _still_ bloody hungry. "Yeah, that works."

"I figured." She chuckled. "Regenviruses might be better than the alternative, but they're no fun at all."

I perked up a bit. "Speaking from experience?"

"Me and every other Marine on this ship." She pointed at her short ribs. "Took a sniper round that came in right between the plates last year. Blew half my liver away." That got a wince, but she continued as if she hadn't noticed. "Got my leg tore up pretty good too, about six months before that. Hardsuits'll keep you alive, but it's not fun when they get smashed up on your body."

I'd call that the understatement of the century, but I would hear far worse in the years to come. "So…" I paused, not sure whether I was about to be unspeakably rude. "Do you have cybernetics?"

Marie snorted. "No, dummy. I'm all meat. Clone parts, you know?"

I gave a sage nod, berating myself mentally. Dewey had practically stated outright that cloned replacements were standard treatment, and I just asked if she had cybernetics. Stupid. "Right. Sorry."

She waved it off. "Don't worry. You're probably so hungry you're not thinking straight."

"Yeah. Is that normal?" The mess hall door hissed open in front of us. "Because I ate two of those breakfast burrito things and I'm still feeling empty."

"You poor man. The burritos?" Kaidan looked up from a heaping scramble of some sort. "Dewey must be trying to poison you."

Marie laughed. "Maybe he's trying to test a new artificial liver."

"I could use one of those!" piped up a Marine with a bleach-blonde mohawk tipped in blue.

Kaidan shook his head with a tolerant sigh. "Cybernetics are good Friedman, but Dewey would need a miracle to let you drink the way you want to. Besides, that part's all meat."

"A woman can dream."

"Of what?" asked a naval rating sitting next to Friedman. "A beer waterfall?"

She slugged the smaller man in the shoulder. "Try whiskey."

Marie nudged me towards a seat with a roll of her eyes, heading off to grab a pair of trays. Kaidan slid a can in front of me.

"What's this?"

"Paragade Biotic Spark." He gave a soft chuckle at the name. "It's the energy drink the Alliance gives to biotic soldiers."

I picked up the can, looking it over. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Cybernetic patients are often low on energy, and this can help."

I cracked the top and raised the can in salute. "Thanks. Cheers!"

So would begin my life-long addiction.

* * *

I felt much better after the Paragade hit my system. The stuff was, and still is, singularly nasty. I maintain that this is an essential quality of a really good energy drink. For me at least, that tongue twisting taste gets me focused even before the megadose of caffeine, taurine, and various other assorted ingredients starts filling my tank.

But even if you like your wake-up juice to taste good, you can't deny that Paragade gives you energy in spades. I'd probably think it overkill for anyone who didn't have eezo in their nervous system or a chunk of metal and polymer replacing a limb. For those of us who are so blessed, however, it's just about perfect.

The third helping of rations didn't hurt either. For the first time that day, I felt vaguely full, and was able to maintain something like table manners while I ate. I almost even considered leaving some of the food behind. Almost.

I still cleaned the tray, but I was distracted by Friedman. I had made the mistake of asking her why she had the blue dye in her hair. I still couldn't believe the Alliance let its troops get away with that.

Kaidan groaned and covered his eyes. Marie just shook her head as Friedman favored me with one of the biggest shit-eating grins I had seen. "It's azure juice."

I arched an eyebrow as the naval rating chuckled. "Come again?"

Friedman's eyes lit up at my choice of words, and Kaidan started thumping the heel of his palm into his forehead. "I guess if she did, that'd get rid of my roots."

"Asari don't have blue…" protested Kaidan in a pained tone.

Friedman didn't so much as let him finish. Apparently this was not the first time they had gone over this story. "Come? Hey, it was my hair in that muff, bumpy. And the hanar hadn't been in there yet." She chuckled and the navy rating started hammering the table with a balled fist, tears leaking from screwed-shut eyes.

I put my fork down. "Okay, you've got a very lost civvy."

Marie smiled. "I didn't take you for a hothouse flower like Alenko here." Kaidan groaned.

I shook my head. "No, no, I get that there was a wild incident with an asari and a hanar on some shore leave, if I'm not off base." A grin and nod from Friedman confirmed that I was on the money. "I just don't get why you'd be scalp-deep in azure."

Friedman enlightened me with a story that remains in my top five dirtiest of all time. Kaidan was scandalized.

* * *

"So," I asked Marie as we made our way from the mess. "Exactly how much of that was true?"

Marie let out a very un-marine-like giggle. "As near as we can tell, all of it." She nodded at the hallway ahead of us. "Want to try walking on your own for a bit?"

I gave another one shoulder shrug. "I can give it a shot." To my surprise, my legs did a decent job of supporting my weight, even if I wasn't going to be dancing anytime soon. The wonders of Paragade. "Also, you're fucking with me."

She shook her head. "Nope. The part where she's buck-ass nude, done up all shibari-style by hanar tentacles, asari riding her hawk, and running down the street?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I _saw_ that." At the dumbfounded look on my face, she laughed. "So while we can't confirm what happened behind closed doors, just about two-thirds of what didn't had an eyewitness on crew somewhere."

"Oh, come on. The fountain thing has to be bullshit."

"Five witnesses that agree on the salient points."

"No."

"Hey, hanar like water."

"No."

"I'm telling the truth, I swear."

I retrieved another bottle of Paragade from the waistband of my sweats, cracked it and took a long drink, wanting to keep my energy up. Recapping the bottle, I looked back at Marie. "No."

"Fine, don't believe me." There was no malice in her tone. "Do you need to rest?"

I shook my head. "I think I should be good for a bit," I said as I tucked the bottle back in my waistband. "Where are we going now?"

She shrugged. "Anywhere you like, so long as it's not restricted."

"So nowhere particularly interesting." As cool as being on an Alliance Special Forces frigate was, an endless array of navy-blue walls and industrial architecture wore thin awfully fast. Vids tend to gloss over the fact that space travel involves a lot of dead time in utilitarian surroundings.

"Isn't that what I just said?" she joked.

"I was afraid of that." I cocked my head to the side. "What about useful?"

"I don't follow."

"Well…" I began, wondering if I was falling into a trap with regards to my lie of being from the universe, "I should probably get acquainted with emergency procedure, shouldn't I? God forbid that something goes wrong and I don't know the quickest route to the lifepods or the storm cellar because military notation is different from what I'm used to. It's not like I'm going to moving that fast, even in freefall."

She gave me an appraising look. I swear, my heart nearly stopped as worst-case scenarios swirled through my mind. "Never met a religious spacer before."

Relief washed through my body, nearly making my legs collapse. My mind went on overdrive as I tried to fit the implications of what she had said into my cover story. My mouth was already spinning the tale. "I'm not that devout. But it's cultural, you know?"

"Oh I know. I just figured that all you guys scoffed at 'primitive beliefs' as you zipped about the heavens with your phonetic alphabets and your adjustable gravity. Most of the others do."

"Call me weird." I made a mental note to look up the current phonetic alphabet. "Also, adjustable gravity is seriously overrated."

She laughed. "Oh, tell me about it. I thought it was the coolest thing, till I ran into a malfunctioning grav plate."

"Oooh." I winced. I could only imagine how that would be. Quite literally at that point. Later, I would get more hands-on experience than I cared for.

"Yeah, straight from .8G one step to 2.7 the next." She shook her head. "I went down hard."

"Yeah, that's maintenance you really don't want to skip," I said in what I hoped was a sage tone.

"Anyway," she thumped a bulkhead that was painted in various alphanumerics and what looked like OSHA pictures. "Alliance warships use pretty standard notation. This, as I'm sure you've gathered, is a lifepod." She pointed out a couple of grooves in the alloy. "Irene should activate the pods in an emergency, but if she's offline, it's a pretty simple mechanical trigger."

"Irene…ship's VI?" I made sure to commit the bulkhead and markings to memory.

"Yeah. It's a historical reference, before you ask."

I smiled as I recognized the go code for the battle the ship was named for. "Huh. Strange for a ship named _Mogadishu_."

She shrugged. "As for storm cellars, the entire ship is pretty well rad shielded, compared to a civilian boat, but in really bad cases, essential areas like CIC, medical, engineering, and the mess hall are built to spec for the nastiest stuff we've run into. There's a mark on the hatchframes. The lifepods also make for pretty decent storm cellars if you've got nowhere else to go."

We started moving down the hall again. "Anything else I should know?"

"Nothing a spacer wouldn't be familiar with…" I gave a mental curse at that. There were obviously things I could really use instruction in, but given the story I was using, I was assumed to already know. I prayed that I wouldn't have to put on a vac suit anytime soon. "Oh! If you hear a general quarters or clear for action call, you should make your way to medical."

"And tuck myself out of the way. Got it."

"Nice to see a civilian who understands."

I shrugged. "Yeah, well," I pointed to my cybernetics. "Object lessons were necessary."

Marie tried not to laugh. "Point. So did I hear right? Are you going to enlist?"

I nodded. "I don't see any other real choice. I've not got a credit to my name, and I need _something_ to do."

"I suppose it beats washing dishes. I've got to warn you though, you might need to update your choice in weapons."

"Ha ha." I gave her a dirty look. "It's what I had to work with."

"Well, it did work…kinda." There was a twitch in her cheek as she suppressed laughter. "I suppose you could try and get in one of those ninja squads."

"Ninja?" I looked at her with incredulity plain on my face. "What in God's name would the Alliance be training ninja for?"

"Stealthy close combat and espionage would be my bet." She shook her head. "I'm yanking your chain, Valentine. There's some rumors of a cybernetic covert ops group. Story goes that they use these fancy monoedge blades. Ninja."

I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, I think I'll pass."

"Do you have any idea what you are going to buck for? No offense, but you don't really strike me as the infantry type."

I shrugged. I knew I didn't want to go non-combatant, but I hadn't been lying to Dewey when I said that general infantry wasn't for me. "I don't know. Armor, maybe? Drone warfare?"

Marie scoffed. "Waste a spacer on armor? Fat chance. And you're WAY too aggressive to be a drone weenie."

"How am I too aggressive?" I shot back, indignant. Even as I said it, I could hear her answer in my mind.

"Sword," she said with a laugh.

I hung my head. "Fair cop." Sighing, I looked over at her. "Do you have any ideas?"

She looked taken aback. "Huh. I suppose you'd be a fit for the boarding teams if you take to z-gee like most spacers. Exosuit infantry's also supposed to be expanding, from what I hear. Good way to get it stuck in against pirate scum." Images of mobile infantry armor flashed through my head, jumppacks aglow as y-racks scattered bomblets and hand flamers scorched the battlefield. Starship Troopers had always been an important novel to me. The flash of a shoulder-fired baby nuke washed out the fantasy as Marie continued. "Of course, they normally pull from special forces and colony grunts like me for that. Got any schooling?"

I nodded. "Psychology. Not sure that I can track down my degree, though."

"Yeah, that happens with the Verge. Still…" She bit her lip. "I might have an idea. Care to see something interesting that's not off limits?"

What else could I say but yes?

* * *

It wasn't the first time I had been in the _Mog_'s hangar bay, but I was significantly more conscious the second time around. It was also larger than I expected. Before hopping universes, I had seen the hangars of only two Alliance frigates, the SR-1 _Normandy_, and the so called SR-2. Both the initial _Normandy_-class and the Cerberus designed _Chi Bi_-class upscale incorporated a great deal of turian design philosophy. Turian weapons, turian command deck layout, turian spaceframes, and of course, turian hangar space.

To turian doctrine, the _Normandy _had plenty of space in its hangar bay. There was assembly room for a reinforced platoon, along with an APC or air-droppable tank for light armor support. The ramp was equipped with a mass-effect deployment system that let troops simply leap out of the ship without jump packs safely, in the event that a Hierarchy _Normandy_-class wasn't carrying troops from the 26th Armiger Legion. In a pinch, the class could tactically insert a full company of the 26th, though not with any kind of endurance. A slow elevator from the crew deck to the hangar made the loiter time prohibitive as well.

For the Alliance however, who tended towards airmobile forces, the hangar space was constricting. Both the _Normandy _and the _Mogadishu _were designed for reinforced platoons. The _Mog_ had hangar space for four UT-47 Kodiaks and a wingpair of A-61 Mantises. Later upgrades would add a pair of F-61 Tridents in overhead racks.

This, not, as many an asari armchair admiral suggested, a lower level of technology, explained the tendency of Alliance ships to have a larger displacement than their equivalents in other races' navies. Humans like their aerospace groups.

The upshot of all this was that when Marie showed me into the hangar bay, I got my biggest shock since getting shot. Let's face it. When you wake up after getting shot, you expect some pretty extreme measures were necessary to save your life. The drugs helped too. Meeting a major character from a fictional series? I'd just killed the first alien I met, and the second one damn near returned the favor. But thinking you know exactly what something is supposed to look like, and being completely wrong? It can rattle you, hard.

Enough, in my case, to let my mask of 'this is all only slightly weird to me' crack into a full-blown "Wow!" A full-blown geeky grin spread across my face as I watched the techs pick over one of the Mantises' engines. A cluster of pilots sat nearby, playing cards, cursing and crowing in turns. It all barely registered as I hobbled towards the slate-gray Mantis the techs were working on.

The gunship, even with an engine dismounted and panels open to reveal critical flight systems, radiated a sense of lethal readiness. From the paired cannons below its chin, to the pair of four-tube flatpack omnirocket overwing pods, the front promised the instant death of a coiled cobra. The oversized control surfaces and nearly unrestricted gimbals on the engines spoke of hummingbird agility.

Let's face it. For me, it was love at first sight.

It wasn't until I ran my hand along the ladar-absorbent panels that coated the chin that I realized that Marie was laughing. Trailing my fingers along the gunship's flank, I turned to face her, only to start at seeing the entire card game standing with her with various expressions of amusement on their faces. "What?"

Marie shook her head. "Nothing. I figured you might have the pilot bug, but…"

One of the pilots, a red-haired woman with an impressive spray of freckles and suspiciously dull almond-shaped eyes cut in. "But we haven't seen someone drool over an Alpha Six One since Trick saw we got the Block 50 Delta Alpha Papa."

"Shut up, Cornstarch!" shot back "Trick", a short black man with a shaved head and brilliant green eyes. His flight suit proclaimed his name to be Lt. Marcus Card. "How long did you spend _cooing_ over the avionic updates?"

Sgt. Harere Taguchi, "Cornstarch", sniffed, nose up in the air. "No longer than was necessary."

"I remember a _very_ creeped out technician or two." Trick crossed his arms with a smug smile.

"How about you're both insane and the Block 50 is a damn fine bird?" asked a blond beanpole of a man with a tone proclaiming that his question was in fact a statement.

The last pilot grinned, white teeth the exact opposite of his thick wavy ebon hair. "Sounds about right to me, Major Munchkin." His more complex rank insignia put him above Cornstarch, though I didn't have the experience to read it yet.

Munchkin cleared it up for me right away. "Just so, Gunny." He fixed his gaze directly to mine, something which I realized only Captain Penkala and Dewey had done so far. "Good to see you a bit more complete, Mr. Valentine."

I blinked in confusion. Marie coughed. "The Major and Gunny flew medevac up to the _Mog_ for you."

"Oh! Oh. Thank you, sir." I held out my hand for him to shake. Luckily, the gesture was still in common currency. "I hope I wasn't too much of a mess."

The pilots snickered. "If it wasn't for Alenko, you probably would have been," pointed out Munchkin, releasing my hand. "But we can hardly hold that against you."

Feeling a heat rise in my cheeks, I let a shy little grin spread onto my lips. "Very kind of you."

Cornstarch let out a belly laugh. "Yeah, Munchkin's a magnanimous soul, isn't he?"

The blonde pilot shook his head and gestured at the Mantis I had been taking in. "Now that you're not at risk of repainting the interior, would you like to take a look inside?"

"Crimson would be gauche," I mused, to the chuckles of the group. "I don't know what I was thinking." I looked back at the gunship and bit my lip. "There's nothing classified in there?"

"Nothing worse than your new arm," pointed out the black haired Gunny. "They've already showed the Block 50's interior off on the extranet. "

"Then, yes, yes I would."

* * *

That was how I got my chance to sit in the pilot's seat of an A-61 Mantis for the first time. My feet went directly to the yaw pedals as my hand wrapped around the side mounted stick, finger tips brushing across buttons and HAT switches. I mentally cursed my immobile left arm as my brain tried to get my hand onto the three-axis throttle. Holoprojectors dotted the console in front of me, flanking a large hardscreen that functioned as the prime MFD for the gunship. On instinct, I molded myself to the gel padding of the ejection seat, flicking my glowing eyes back and forth, regardless of the pain my face reported, checking the visibility before craning my neck around to a nasty surprise. The Mantis had piss-poor visibility for the pilot past the 3-9 line.

Trick grimaced from where he stood over my shoulder, looking over me as I sat in his seat. "Yeah, they optimized for ground attack and screwed us in a dogfight." He turned and spat. "But that's why the Alliance issued us LIO's right?"

Cornstarch scoffed from over my other shoulder. "Like we'll ever get a dogfight with the Tridents and Yaris on BARCAP."

Trick rolled his eyes. "And when we aren't deployed with them?" He looked at me with a long-suffering look.

"Yeah, when has that happened?" The woman shook her head. "I'll be eyes enough, and you know it." She gave Trick a reassuring smile.

"Yeah…" Trick returned the smile and looked at me. "How's it feel?"

"Feels…" I paused, looking over the inert controls and out the canopy to the closed hangar doors, as if I could peer through them to the blueshifted stars ahead. I closed my eyes, imagining alien skies and starfields pinwheeling across the canopy as displays fed me critical flight and targeting information. I imagined a LCOS pipper drifting across a geth fighter, which burst into flashes of blue hits on kinetic barriers as I pulled the trigger before an argent flash consumed the wasp-shaped bandit. I opened my eyes, realizing that my finger had tightened on the sidestick's trigger. A wolfish grin, full of teeth, split my face. "It feels _right._"


End file.
